30

I can navigate down in directory using cd in the terminal. How do I navigate back up if I go too far?

user598527
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ruckus
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    Possible duplicate of [Going to the parent directory of a file with cd?](http://askubuntu.com/questions/316628/going-to-the-parent-directory-of-a-file-with-cd) – DJCrashdummy Nov 29 '15 at 01:05
  • http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/81232/18237 great for working in multiple directory branches, and marking a "starting" point to come back to – Mateo Nov 29 '15 at 04:58
  • I know none of you want to admit that you were this stupid, but this question just hit 1000 views. so *haha* i know other people like me are out there. :P – ruckus May 16 '16 at 19:40

4 Answers4

47

cd .. will bring you back exactly one directory up.

You can string together those to go up multiple directories, e.g. up 3

cd ../../..

Instead of typing cd .. multiple times, what you could to is to place the function bellow into your .bashrc somewhere at the top, save .bashrc, and run source .bashrc or just close and reopen a terminal. Now, you have a function that does cd.. exactly how many times you told it to.

function goUp {
  num=$1
  while [ $num -ne 0  ];do
    cd ..
    num=$((num-1))
  done
}

Demo:

$ cd /usr/share/backgrounds/                                                  

backgrounds:$ goUp 2

usr:$

Alternatively:

goup(){ 
    cd $(n=$1 awk 'BEGIN{
        for(i=1;i<=ENVIRON["n"];i++) 
            printf "../"}';) 
}

Note that such method brings you back along the symlinks. Here's what I mean:

$ namei "$PWD" 
f: /home/user/VirtualBox VMs/CentOS
 d /
 d home
 d user
 l VirtualBox VMs -> /mnt/ubuntu/vboxvms
   d /
   d mnt
   d ubuntu
   d vboxvms
 d CentOS

$ goup 2
$ pwd
/home/user

See also

Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
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3

I found a simple way to go up.

cd ../

./ means current directory

../means one level up directory

adazem009
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    Upvote because I did not know that the `cd ..` stands for `cd ../`, I thought it would be just like cd.. in Windows and did not understand the space in between until now. – questionto42 Feb 11 '21 at 14:48
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    @questionto42 Yeah, `..` is same as `../`, as well as `.` vs `./`. You can even join multiple slashes like this: `.///`. It's still same as `.`. There are also other `cd` tricks, like `cd -`, which will change the directory to the previous one. But that's a bit off topic :) – adazem009 Feb 11 '21 at 21:23
  • `..`doesn't "stand for `../`, it's just the name of the parent directory. It's actually an entry (not sure off the top of my head if real or virtual) in the current directory. Do `ls -la` to see the entries for both `.` and `..`. – Jürgen A. Erhard Jul 01 '23 at 13:44
1

You can use popd and pushd too, to "checkpoint" or "bookmark", or as I tend to describe it; "set a spawn-point":

pushd ./ # set the spawn point to the current folder ./

go to another directory, like cd .. or whatever

popd     # get back to where we set pushd

This is, hopefully something useful for someone,

Pablo Bianchi
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William Martens
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0
  1. For normal bash:
  • cd ..
  • cd -
  1. I suggest using oh-my-zsh instead of a typical shell. It has a number of aliases; concerning the one you asked, you type .. without cd. Very comfy.

Next, one may use several periods for more levels:

-='cd -'
...=../..
....=../../..
.....=../../../..
......=../../../../..

Moreover, for going upward any number of levels, just type the number

1='cd -1'
2='cd -2'
3='cd -3'
4='cd -4'
5='cd -5'
6='cd -6'
7='cd -7'
8='cd -8'
9='cd -9'

E.g.,

$ ~/Documents/Fld1/Fld2/Fld3
$ 3
$ ~/Documents
Mykola Tetiuk
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